


Nothing We Could Call Our Own

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally repressed Imperials trying to be a little less emotionally repressed, Faro swooping in to solve problems, Homesickness, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized homophobia is here as well but you'll have to search for it, Loneliness, M/M, Mild Angst, Pre-Slash, Serious stress on the 'implied' part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Eli is more than happy to accompany Thrawn on a brief scouting mission to a planet composed entirely of tundra.He's a little less happy when this quick excursion turns into a full-day, frostbite-inducing ordeal.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 5
Kudos: 105





	Nothing We Could Call Our Own

**Author's Note:**

> Fic inspired by "Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl" by John Greenleaf Whittier. Title is taken from this poem, too:
> 
> So all night long the storm roared on:  
> The morning broke without a sun;  
> In tiny spherule traced with lines  
> Of Nature's geometric signs,  
> In starry flake and pellicle,  
> All day the hoary meteor fell;  
> And when the second morning shone,  
> We looked upon a world unknown,  
> On nothing we could call our own.

It would be a beautiful planet, Eli thought, if it weren’t negative sixty degrees outside.

It was evident to him immediately after landing their shuttle on a treacherous landscape made of icy grit that this wasn’t, as Imperial intel suggested, a disguised enemy base, and he was pretty sure it was evident to Thrawn, too. Negative sixty, they quickly discovered, was the _warmest_ this little tundra planet ever seemed to get; the sun fell fast and the temperature followed it, plummeting lower and lower as their expeditionary trip wore on. 

Besides the frankly appalling climate, Thrawn had noted almost immediately a dozen different things which pointed to their little shuttle being the first aircraft to land on this planet in at least a hundred years, if not ever — things like the level of erosion on the icy mountains as compared to the plains, the pattern of scrub growth on the surface of the land, even the formation of large, coarse, grub-like fungi which seemed to grow primarily in the shadows of large boulders. If the Rebels had _ever_ visited this planet, Thrawn declared, it wasn’t likely they’d even landed, much less established a base. 

And still, he insisted on staying. 

“Let’s go back,” Eli said. He hadn’t been counting, but he suspected this was the fifth or sixth time he’d made this declaration. A few yards away from him, Thrawn hesitated in his study of the tundra, not quite looking Eli’s way. 

“Certainly, you may rest if needed,” he said.

“No, sir,” said Eli promptly. “I mean, we should go back to the _Chimaera_.”

They had been taking regular breaks in the warmth of their shuttle, at Eli’s insistence, but that was no longer adequate. It seemed like each time they rested, the ice clinging to Eli’s hair had barely melted before Thrawn announced it was time to go outside again. He couldn’t take another rapid-pace thaw only to get frozen again.

“We have yet to test the molecular integrity of the frost,” Thrawn said, returning his gaze to the tundra. He stuck the nozzle of a sample-collecting gun into the scrim and squeezed the trigger, his hand steady as the vial inside filled. “Furthermore, I suspect there are unusual levels of electric charge in the flesh of the fungi which require further examination.”

“I think we’ve collected enough samples, sir,” Eli protested, but he could tell just by looking at what little he could see of Thrawn’s face that this excuse wasn’t going to cut it. “If we need anything else, why don’t we assemble teams to work down here in shifts? We can take volunteers from the enlisted men and send one officer per group—”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Thrawn briskly. He pulled a heated mask over his face, leaving only his eyes visible, and dimmed his tinted goggles further to protect himself from the glare off the ice. The wind picked up, and Eli wished desperately that he could shield himself from it — but he’d had his own heat mask on since they left the shuttle, and there was really nothing further he could do. 

“Sir?” asked Eli.

He received no answer. Thrawn had crossed the coarse ice to the nearest white fungus and was examining it carefully. After a moment, to Eli’s horror, he removed his gloves and ran his fingers over the porous flesh.

Eli’s own hands, snugly covered, were still raw and numb from the hours they’d spent in the cold. He clenched them into fists, hidden deep in his coat pockets, and could barely feel the leather creaking over his knuckles. It hurt to even imagine taking them off.

Thrawn moved his bare hand away from the fungus and a warning jumped out of Eli’s throat before he could stop it.

“Make sure you don’t—”

But Thrawn was already pulling his gloves back on, careful not to touch the synthetic metal which made up the sample gun with his bare skin. Eli’s relief flashed through him — a brief firework on a dark night — before quickly souring into something else.

“Do you believe the electrical charges in that fungus have something to do with the Rebels, sir?” asked Eli, his voice tight.

“No,” said Thrawn immediately, so blissfully absorbed in his research that he didn’t seem to realize what a terrible error it was to admit this. “I simply find it curious.”

Temper flaring, Eli lifted his chin and blinked up at the white sky for a moment, trying to force himself to calm down. He stamped his feet, unable to feel his toes.

“Aren’t you cold, sir?” he tried again.

“Quite,” said Thrawn, unaffected.

“Well—”

“If the climate distresses you,” said Thrawn, carefully extracting a sample from the ugly clump of fungi, “you have my permission to wait in the shuttle, where I trust you will be sufficiently warm.”

Stifling a curse, Eli made his way to where Thrawn crouched before the fungus, his limbs so cold and heavy that he felt like a clumsy child ice-skating for the very first time — despite the fact that the ice here was so gritty and coarse that it didn’t cause any slippage at all. He stared over Thrawn’s shoulder at the bulky weatherproof datapad which was hooked up to the sample gun, meticulously analyzing its contents.

Eli watched the displays flicker as information slowly loaded. His eyes darted back and forth from the screen — and the irritatingly low amount of data there — to Thrawn’s face, drawn tight in concentration.

“Do you suspect the electrical charge may be a sign of sentient life, sir?” Eli asked.

This time, Thrawn hesitated a little, as though he suddenly suspected the true intent behind Eli’s questions. Still, he answered honestly. “Certainly not. While some sentient fungi have been discovered in Imperial space — mostly on more temperate worlds than this — the levels displayed here do not indicate anything more than—”

“So,” said Eli, trying to be patient, “you really are just collecting data for the sake of it? Sir?”

Thrawn studied the datapad for a moment longer. With a careful swipe of his gloved thumb, he moved the data off-screen and deposited the sample vial into a storage box. 

“I’m not sure about you, sir—” Eli said; there was a lump of cold fire in his ribs, and he couldn’t be sure if it was rage about to explode or if it was a dismal sort of hope that he might be getting through to Thrawn. “—but I haven’t been able to feel my fingers or toes for at least ten minutes, and I’m not sure frostbite is an acceptable risk for what you yourself have said is definitely not a Rebel base.”

Thrawn turned to him, eyes sharp, and glanced first at Eli’s gloved fingers and then at his booted toes. “Your heat signature is indeed low, Commander,” he said. “Perhaps your internal thermo-regulation system has been affected. I suggest you return to the shuttle.”

Eli did his best not to let his exasperation show. “I suggest we both return to the shuttle, sir,” he said. “And then to the _Chimaera_. Immediately. There’s no reason to stay.”

“On the contrary—” said Thrawn, already turning back to the fungus.

“ _Sir_ ,” Eli said, with as much force behind his voice as he could muster, “we’re going back to the _Chimaera_. If we stay here any longer, we’re gonna freeze.”

He put his hand on Thrawn’s shoulder, attempting to tug him away from the fungus, but Thrawn did not budge, nor did he so much as glance Eli’s way.

“Stay in the shuttle, Commander,” Thrawn said. 

He said it with a brusque shrug, already turning away as though Eli’s protests were of no concern to him. Eli blinked, momentarily stunned, then tightened his grip on Thrawn’s shoulder and put all his strength into a single sharp pull in the direction of the ship. He wasn’t surprised when Thrawn, once again, didn’t move an inch. 

“We have a substantial amount of research to conduct,” said Thrawn firmly, before Eli could continue his argument. “If you fear for your safety, as indeed you must and as do I, you are permitted to spend the remainder of our time in the shuttle or return to the flagship as per your request. I will not need your assistance here.”

“Sir—” Eli began, before Thrawn’s words caught up to him and he paused mid-sentence, blinking furiously.

He wanted _Eli_ to return to the _Chimaera?_ And leave him alone on a tundra planet with no way back, with no shuttle of his own and with only his comlink to call for help from a ship currently in orbit at least three hours away?

Was he insane?

He’d spent too long staring at Thrawn in shock, and eventually Thrawn shook Eli’s hand off his shoulder and packed up his equipment with quick, economic movements -- not to haul them back to the shuttle, Eli quickly realized, but to transport them instead to the section of frost-molded land he’d cordoned off earlier today for study. He hadn’t made it two steps when Eli slid in front of him, blocking his way. 

“Sir,” said Eli again, and now there was a distinctive note of pleading in his voice, a note even he could hear, “at least tell me why we’re here if we have to stay.”

“We have a substantial amount of work left to finish,” Thrawn said again, his voice clipped. His irritation was clear — and it hurt Eli almost as much as it confused him. He could only stare at Thrawn, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth hanging open as he tried to think of something to say; what little showed of his skin was bitten into a raw, red color by the cold.

Finally, Thrawn started to turn away, thinking the conversation had been resolved, and Eli did the only thing he could think of to properly grab Thrawn’s attention. 

He grabbed his hands. Thrawn went still at his touch.

“As your aide, sir,” said Eli seriously, “it’s my responsibility to alert you when you’re doing something wrong. There’s nothing out here for us to test. We’re only risking frostbite and hypothermia by staying longer.”

Thrawn stared back at him, his face unreadable. Eli could only clasp his hands tighter, words suddenly failing him in an awful sea of anger and desperation. In the end, all he could think of to say was, “I’m going back to the _Chimaera_ now and you’re coming with me. If I stay out here, it’s likely I’ll come to serious harm. But I’m not leaving you alone here, sir, because I have no idea if you can withstand this cold any better than I can. So are you coming with me or not?”

It was, of course, an obvious attempt to guilt Thrawn into abandoning the so-called research he so insisted on conducting. Or, more generously, it was an attempt to appeal to Thrawn’s sense of responsibility as commanding officer. Even Eli wasn’t sure which explanation fully fit his motivations.

For a long time, Thrawn said nothing. Behind the colored lenses, his eyes were unreadable.

But in the end, he slung the research equipment over his back and trudged past Eli to the shuttle, leaving his aide to follow. His posture was stiff and his jaw was tight, but he went.

* * *

They flew back to the _Chimaera_ in silence, with Thrawn’s eyes glued to the viewport the whole time, his dim gaze fixed on the tundra disappear below them. Eli spared his commanding officer a worried glance whenever he could safely look away from the navport; those quick glimpses showed him, invariably, the same image: the edge of Thrawn’s cheekbone and the line of his jaw, his eyelashes and nose barely visible as he turned away.

The three-hour flight passed in utter silence — not a _tense_ silence, Eli noted with mixed surprise and relief, but a heavy, depressing silence that made him feel rather like they’d just witnessed the death of a cute baby wampa and were both too glum to talk about it. Thrawn kept his face turned to the viewport the entire ride back; the only thing that changed when Eli glanced at him was the ice in his blue-black hair, gradually melting as they both defrosted in the warmth of the shuttle.

By the time they’d docked, Thrawn’s uncharacteristic sullenness had disappeared, replaced with his usual impersonal dignity; he took control of the bridge and dismissed Eli in the same breath, sending him back to his quarters to warm up with a tone in his voice that sounded more or less like an apology.

Fat chance. Eli was so keyed up after their — what could he call it? Their weirdly-tense disagreement? — their _almost-fight_ on the tundra planet that he could do nothing but pace back and forth in the passageway, his arms crossed and his teeth still chattering from the cold, his eyebrows drawn low in a scowl. 

And that’s what he was doing when Karyn Faro rounded the corner and spotted him.

“Commander?” She raised an eyebrow at him half a second before Eli deliberately uncrossed his arms and relaxed his posture, trying to look marginally normal. He couldn’t stop the teeth-chattering.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

Then he thought better of it.

“Actually,” he said, staring down at the floor, “do you mind if we talk in private?”

Faro silently acquiesced, allowing herself to be led into Eli’s outer quarters, which served as an office. This was, in fact, the first time he’d ever used it to talk to another officer, and for a moment he hesitated over where to sit. Behind the desk would be too authoritative, since Faro was higher-ranked than him — _on_ the desk would be too informal, regardless of rank.

In the end, before things had the chance to get too awkward, Faro decided for him; she sat on the small couch placed against his wall, and after a moment’s hesitation, Eli joined her.

“Does the Grand Admiral seem odd today?” he asked. 

Faro frowned at him. Her answer was immediate: “No.”

Thrown for a loop, Eli could only blink at her. But this was fine — it didn’t mean that he’d necessarily imagined the almost-fight. It just meant Thrawn’s strange behavior had been confined to the expedition, which meant he at least had a starting point for figuring out what was going on. 

“This is between you and me, of course,” he said, lowering his voice instinctively. Faro leaned in closer to hear him. “But when Thrawn and I went to that ice planet, he wasn’t acting like himself at all. He insisted we stay after our allotted hour for scouting was up — and then again after _that_ hour was up — and when the third hour came, he still tried to stay behind. He told me _I_ could stay in the shuttle for warmth or even go back to the _Chimaera_ , but _he_ was staying until the tests were done.”

Faro only stared at him and waited for more information; her eyebrows were furrowed, her lips tight as she absorbed it all. 

“He acted like we were too busy to leave,” said Eli, still baffled and a little hurt by the whole situation, “but at the same time, there was _clearly_ no more work to be done, and even when he was ‘running tests,’ most of the time he was just looking around at the tundra. And when I finally got fed up and insisted on going back, he acted like he wanted to fight me on it.”

Still, Faro said nothing, her lips pursed as she thought, and in the ensuing silence, Eli had nothing to do but to sit there running his own words through his head until he found flaws in them and started to wish he could take them back.

“I mean, he’s in charge, of course,” he mumbled. “It’s not like I could order him back to the ship. If he really wanted to—”

“Yes,” said Faro crisply, “but he usually listens to you.”

There was another beat of silence. Eli stared at the bulkhead, blinking rapidly and feeling as though his thoughts were a podracer and Faro had just unceremoniously dumped sand into the core fuel tank. 

“He—” Eli started, and stopped to blink some more, utterly confused. “What do you mean by that?”

Faro gave a minute, single-shoulder shrug. “You’re his aide,” she said, her voice bland, as though there were no consequences whatsoever to her words or the implications. Perhaps, to her, there weren’t. “You’re his translator and you’ve been assigned to serve with him for years now; I’m only saying that sometimes, due to your familiarity with him, you give him orders — subtle ones; you might prefer to call them ‘suggestions’ — and typically, he listens.” She gave Eli a sidelong glance. “I’m not saying it’s right of you to be so frustrated that your _commanding officer_ — who happens to be a _Grand Admiral,_ by the way, in case you forgot — didn’t listen to you this time, but I do understand _why_ it frustrates you.”

Eli glared down at his boots, his cheeks hot from the pointedly unsubtle reprimand. “I don’t give him orders,” he said. It was the only protest he could think of, and it didn’t seem to impress Faro.

“Like I said, I’m sure you view them as suggestions,” she said. “Sometimes he gives an order to the crew and you suggest a different path. Typically, he either listens to your suggestion or explains why he’s sticking with his own.”

“That’s not exactly—”

“That’s how all leadership should be, yes,” said Faro patiently. “But you and I both know that if you tried that with any other Imperial officer, you’d get fed to a rancor. Possibly literally. The first time you did that here, everyone on the bridge held their breath — but neither you nor the admiral seemed to think it was odd, and eventually we all got used to it.”

Eli was silent, absorbing everything she'd said. Whatever significance Faro attached to this, he wasn’t able to see it; it was one of Thrawn’s strong points as a leader that he was willing to listen to suggestions from his subordinates without any sort of egotistical bluster. This amiable attitude wasn’t exclusive to Eli, as Faro seemed to suggest.

Unless that _wasn’t_ what she was suggesting. Eli sneaked a quick glance at her and found her staring at the bulkhead, her eyes far away and unreadable. As she said, Eli had been the first of the _Chimaera’s_ crew to offer Thrawn alternative suggestions (he refused to think of them as orders) in public, but he wasn’t the only one. Several other officers — and even enlisted men, even stormtroopers — had gradually grown comfortable enough to follow Eli’s lead. Faro herself had been one of the first.

So what in the galaxy _was_ she suggesting? All of it — the long hours on that dreadful planet, the near-argument with Thrawn, this perplexing conversation — was settling heavily into Eli’s head, making his temples pound. He ground the heel of his palm into his eyes and put his other hand on the back of his neck, trying futilely to rub out a kink which had settled there and was now loudly screaming for relief.

“Anyway,” said Faro suddenly, still not quite looking at Eli, “I don’t think this situation is as mysterious as you think, Commander.”

Eli blinked, momentarily pausing as he rubbed his neck. When he didn’t say anything — didn’t prompt Faro to continue — she finally turned and looked at him, slowly dragging her eyes up from his neck to his chin to his eyes, as though whatever she had to say was so sensitive she couldn’t stand to look at him.

“Didn’t Thrawn come from an ice planet?” she asked.

A cold, thick sensation settled in Eli’s throat and chest, reminding him of the choking sea fog which used to invade his family's shipyards on autumn mornings. He removed his hand from his neck slowly, barely able to think. “I— yes, I think so,” he said, startled. “Yes.”

Faro stared at him expectantly.

Eli stared back at her and saw his own wary comprehension mirrored in her eyes.

Leadingly (but tentatively, as though she almost hoped he would contradict her), Faro said, “You don’t think … maybe he was just...?”

Eli opened his mouth to protest — then closed it silently, chagrined. It seemed almost ludicrous that the solution could be so simple … but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.

And he felt like an idiot for not realizing on his own.

“Kriff,” he muttered. Faro nodded sympathetically — and a bit patronizingly, which Eli supposed he deserved. “I didn’t even—” Sighing, Eli buried his head in his hands. “Of _course_ he wanted to stick around a bit longer. I’m an idiot.”

“Well, the cold may have scrambled your brains a bit, Commander,” Faro conceded. “And of course, homesickness—” She hesitated a little at saying the word aloud. It was ridiculous, but Eli suspected he would have hesitated, too. “—isn’t sufficient excuse to risk frostbite and hypothermia.”

A few hours ago, Eli would have vehemently agreed, probably while pointedly massaging his numb hands. Now, he just felt like the world’s most insensitive nerf-herder — especially since, in the end, he hadn’t even gotten chilblains from the cold, let alone frostbite.

“He _always_ insists on going planetside when we have missions on snowy planets,” Eli said, talking more to himself than to Faro, who hummed sympathetically nonetheless. “I should have realized…”

“Well,” said Faro, brushing imaginary dust off her uniform to signify she was quite done with this conversation, “it’s in the past, Commander. If it’s any consolation to you, he seems quite recovered to me.”

Eli made no response, glaring darkly at his own boots. Beside him, Faro stood and briefly squeezed his shoulder before taking her leave. She shuffled her feet at the end of the corridor and half-turned, as though she’d found something else to say — but she turned away silently and left it unsaid.

“Kriff,” said Eli again.

* * *

By the time Eli’s next shift came about, the last few trace effects of cold had disappeared, leaving his face unflushed and his body at a comfortable, moderate temperature. His hair had dried again and his skin no longer felt itchy and heated. A quick glance in the mirror before he left for the bridge showed that he looked the part of a normal, fresh-faced Imperial officer eager to get to work.

He certainly didn’t _feel_ the part, of course, but he supposed few officers ever did. He entered the bridge silently, walking past Faro (who did not glance up from her station) and taking his customary place next to Thrawn at the navport.

Thrawn’s eyes flickered to him, a quick, sharp glance before he turned his eyes back to the datapad in his hands.

“Commander Vanto,” he said neutrally. “You’ve reviewed the supply data I requested?”

It seemed like such a natural way to segue from their almost-argument earlier back into regular life that Eli barely noticed it for what it was. “Yes, sir,” he said, and pulled up his findings on his own datapad without hesitation. As he guided Thrawn through the results — which were not exactly optimal, to Eli’s eye — he could feel Faro’s gaze light on his back and rest there a moment before turning away.

He gave the rundown on autopilot, barely hearing his own words, and Thrawn listened silently. He seemed as wholly absorbed in Eli’s findings as he’d been in his research on the tundra planet — which, Eli supposed, probably meant this data was just as useless as it seemed.

“And that’s more or less it, sir,” he said as he scrolled to the last of several graphs he’d made up. He banished the data with a single swipe of his finger and blacked the screen, finally raising his eyes to meet Thrawn’s. 

Only Thrawn wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were fixed on the navport, hands clasped behind his back.

“Highly informative, Commander,” said Thrawn, his voice distant. “Join me in my command room, if you please.”

He turned on his heel before Eli had time to process his words, striding across the bridge without looking back to make sure Eli was following. Flustered, Eli hesitated a moment longer before rushing to catch up.

If anyone on the bridge thought it odd that Eli and Thrawn were leaving so soon after their shifts began, they didn’t show it — and of course, Eli speculated, it wasn’t exactly uncommon for Thrawn to pull officers from duty for some project or other. It especially wasn’t uncommon for him to pull this with Eli.

Still, Eli’s throat felt unusually tight as he followed Thrawn off the bridge, and he couldn’t help but notice that Faro still didn’t meet his eyes when he passed her again.

Their walk to the command room was entirely silent — the same sort of heavy, depressing silence which had hung over them in the shuttle. As they stepped inside, Eli was momentarily disoriented by the dim lights and the holo art displays shimmering from every corner of the room, but Thrawn already had his datapad out to adjust the scene. The lights flared up to eighty percent; the holos fizzled out of sight.

Eli could hear the soft click of a button as Thrawn powered down his datapad. He could hear the slide of metal on wood as Thrawn placed it, face-down, on his desk.

He could hear the faintest of sighs issuing from one of them, but his heart was rushing in his ears, and he couldn’t be sure which of them it was.

“Sir—” Eli started. Thrawn, who had just parted his lips to speak, blinked in surprise and closed his mouth without a word, waiting for Eli to finish. Self-consciously, Eli cut himself off as well and redirected his gaze to his boots for what felt like the hundredth time today.

The silence stretched on. When he was finally sure Eli wasn’t going to speak, Thrawn spoke. His voice was neutral, a little brisk.

“Commander Vanto,” he said, “I apologize for prolonging our planetside mission. While I have made efforts in the past to study human physiology, I …” He blinked, suddenly falling silent. Eli watched the muscles of his throat constrict as he swallowed and felt a faint, almost panicky sense of surprise. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Thrawn hesitate before. “I…” Thrawn said again, rearranging his sentence, “have studied human physiology, and am fully aware that three hours of exposure to such a climate is inappropriate, regardless of protective outerwear, and—” He blinked again, and this time his eyes slid slowly away from Eli. “—discounting periods of rest in a heated enclosure such as the shuttle. Knowing your limitations, it was my responsibility to ensure you came to no harm. I came dangerously near to failing in that regard.”

His eyes slid back to Eli. His face was impossible to read again. It seemed evident that he expected Eli to respond in some way, but Eli could think of only one thing to say, and part of him thought it might be better to just accept the apology and walk away.

Instead, he heard himself saying, in a slow and hesitant voice, “Are … are Chiss typically more resistant to the cold, sir? Than humans?”

It was a long moment before Thrawn answered. He blinked slowly as he processed the question, eyes fixed not on Eli but on a sculpt visible in the corner of the command room.

“Not physiologically,” said Thrawn eventually. “But psychologically, I believe we may be.” He met Eli’s gaze, finally, and his mouth was set in a strangely determined-looking line. “You are from a temperate planet, Commander Vanto. It is natural that you might feel both physical and emotional discomfort in the cold — a human raised in a more hibernal environment, however, might withstand sub-zero temperatures solely because he is mentally accustomed to it, not because he is physiologically more adapted to that climate.”

Eli’s mind was whirring. He could hear Faro’s words echoing his brain. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, swallowing the words on the tip of his tongue: _So you_ do _miss Csilla, and you felt the cold just as badly as I did. And still, you wanted to stay._

There was no point, he realized, in saying so aloud. He could see the flash of something akin to anxiety in Thrawn’s face as he waited for Eli to respond. To address the bantha in the room would only serve to embarrass them both ( _or,_ whispered a barely-audible voice in Eli’s head, _it would do something much bigger;_ to actually discuss aloud, for the very first time, the loneliness that must come from exile, from being the only Chiss in this entire side of the galaxy and the only alien officer in the Imperial Navy … he felt instinctively that it would lead to an entirely different conversation, would open a new door between himself and Thrawn, and he balked at that with the same hot-cold surge of panic he’d felt earlier, when Thrawn had hesitated in the middle of a sentence). 

So what he said, with numb lips and a dry throat, was, “I see. And I apologize, as well, sir.”

Thrawn raised his eyebrows.

“For rushing you,” said Eli, staring at the same sculpt Thrawn had studied earlier. His words came out in a whisper and hung in the air between them.

Without looking away from the sculpt, he heard Thrawn clear his throat. He heard the slide of the datapad across the desk; he heard the click of a button as Thrawn turned it on. When Eli finally tore his eyes away from the corner, he found Thrawn studying his messages almost furiously, his face a mask.

“Sir, I—” Eli said, but once he managed to force those words out, he realized he wasn’t at all sure what he wanted to say. Across the room, a muscle jumped along Thrawn’s jaw.

“It’s fine, Eli,” he said. His eyes flickered up from the datapad, meeting Eli’s gaze just briefly before falling away. He took a deep, silent breath, his chest rising and falling, and Eli found himself taking deep breaths, too, his palms suddenly damp, his skin hot.

He felt like maybe that door was opening between them anyway, despite his best efforts to avoid it — and despite Thrawn’s. He watched as Thrawn’s eyebrows furrowed and his lips parted, poised to speak, his tongue caught briefly between his teeth almost like he knew he had to say it and didn’t want to, all the same. Like maybe he felt the same unpleasant electric spark in the air that Eli felt, or the same hot-cold panic coiled in his ribs.

But he did speak.

And all he said was, “You’re wanted on the bridge.”


End file.
